The 2017 CrossFit Team Series begins on Wednesday.
It’s the series’ fourth season, and this year, the competition is more accessible than ever. Gone is the need for quantum physics to figure out how to get your night-nurse, firefighter, lawyer and college-student dream team in the gym at the same time; this year, teams are duos only.
Plus, in addition to divisions both as prescribed and scaled, for the first time, teams will compete in age groups identical to the CrossFit Games Open.
Still need convincing? I talked to three teams, each gearing up to compete in the Team Series for the first time. Spanning age groups, experience levels and even nations, they shared a few good reasons to throw down.
Gabriel and Corina
For Gabriel Perez, 30, it’s been “all about the competition” since he first started CrossFit eight years ago. Though he originally started as a way to regain strength after a jiu-jitsu injury, he knew he’d found his new sport the first time he laid eyes on the whiteboard at CrossFit Monrovia.
“I was just like, ‘Wait, you save the scores on the board?’” he recalled.
After his first class, Perez made a list of all the CrossFit benchmark workouts, taking note of when he planned to see his name at the top of the board for each. Two months later, he entered his first competition.
“I went in the Rx division and just got destroyed, but absolutely loved it,” he said. “Getting beat that bad I think is what got me to really stick with it.”
Perez has competed in every CrossFit Games Open since then, qualifying for the Southern California Regional in 2012 and 2013. In 2011, he opened his own affiliate, CrossFit North Pasadena. He hopes to make it back to the Regional floor someday, but that has little to do with his reasons for competing in the Team Series, he said.
“This is the first competition that we’re going to do as an engaged couple,” he said, referring to his fiancée, Corina Powell.
Though Powell, 26, has only been doing CrossFit for three years to Perez’s eight, Perez said training to compete with her has brought an element of fun back to a sport he’d begun to take too seriously.
“I usually train by myself and I’m just all in my head, (thinking) ‘So-and-so is probably getting a better score than me,’” Perez explained. “But when I get to work out with Corina, she brings a playfulness. Instead of angry music playing, she’ll put on some Beyoncé and I'm like, ‘OK, this is fun.’”
In return, Powell—who describes herself as less competitive than her fiancé—said Perez is the perfect partner for her. His longevity in the sport makes him a good coach, she said.
“If I get over-anxious and I’m trying to push the pace too fast, he does a really good job of saying, ‘Stick with our plan; here’s what we’re going to do,’” Powell said.
The Team Series also gives her something to work toward, something Powell said was a struggle in the globo gym before CrossFit.
“I would just get lazy in the gym by myself,” she said. “In order to keep myself consistent, I have to have something to work towards, and competitions give me that.”
Earlier this year, Powell got her first ring muscle-up. If muscle-ups are programmed in the Team Series this year, it will be just one more chance to tick off a new goal.
“Getting her to do muscle-ups with a running clock while she's tired ... I think that'd be awesome,” said Perez, ever the coach.
Either way, it will be a good experience, Powell said.
“I love doing CrossFit and I love competing,” she said. “More than anything, I love doing it with Gabriel. I think it’s another thing that makes our relationship really special … . (The Team Series) is another experience that I get to share with him, and I think it’s the best thing that I get out of it.”
Roberto and Marya
Roberto Viamonte and Marya Alejandra are another couple competing in the CrossFit Team Series.
When Viamonte, a CrossFit athlete of about a year-and-a-half, asked Alejandra, his girlfriend, to be his Team Series partner, she was “shocked,” she said. Only three months into her own CrossFit journey, the pair’s ability levels are considerably varied.
That doesn’t matter to Viamonte.
“I don’t care if we have to scale,” he told her.
All he wants is to introduce his girlfriend to the thrill of competition. A former mountain-bike racer, the 26-year-old Venezuelan compared CrossFit—and especially competing in CrossFit—to the final sprint in a race.
“In mountain biking, the best part is the sprint,” he said. “Then I met CrossFit, and I cheated on mountain biking. This high-intensity thing drives me crazy, (giving) it all in a short period of time.”
That feeling, he said, is better than any ranking the couple could earn on the Leaderboard.
“I'm doing this because I want to share it with her, all of these feelings I feel when I compete—I want her to know them,” Viamonte said.
Alejandra was skeptical at first. With no sports background before CrossFit—which she joined to spend more time with her boyfriend—she said competition “did not call my attention, not even a little bit.”
Eventually she acquiesced out of pure curiosity, after Viamonte described competing as more fun than a party. He described a recent party he’d attended, daydreaming about a recent fitness competition in Venezuela while others danced and drank.
“And it came to my mind, that’s the kind of party I like,” he said. “Three, two, one, go—that’s very exciting. I love it, even though I’ve never been first.”
Devan “Tank” and Zachary
It’s no secret that competing with others makes us push harder and, as a result, can lead to new accomplishments. But competing with a team, as opposed to solo, can have strategic benefits as well.
“You also have that second mind to point out things that we could do better,” said Devan “Tank” Atkinson (the 25-year-old former collegiate football player has been called “Tank” ever since he made a practice of mowing fellow children to the ground during childhood flag football).
Atkinson, a CrossFit athlete of just less than a year, will be competing alongside his friend and fellow CrossFit Enoch athlete, 35-year-old Zachary Pulliam. The pair trains together every day at 5 a.m. and hopes to use the Team Series as a launching point for more partner competitions to come.
“So far it's been great,” said Pulliam, who’s done CrossFit for two-and-a-half years. “It's been fun. It's been a lot of learning, because it's different to just go in there and work out by yourself, but to coordinate that effort with someone else—that's just a whole new animal, a whole different thing.”
Both men describe themselves as highly competitive—the game “Monopoly” is forbidden in the Pulliam household—though Pulliam said it’s not for the sake of results alone.
“There's something in the heat of the moment, in that spirit of competition, that brings you to a whole other level,” he said. “You take away the restraints … . It's thrilling, it's exciting and it's fun.”
The pair also competes to send a positive message about the power of CrossFit, whether to their young children—Atkinson has a 2-year-old son; Pulliam’s son is 3—or to friends and co-workers who wonder what the deal is with all this CrossFit Team Series stuff.
“That's what I want—spreading positive feedback and letting them know (they) should check out CrossFit,’” Atkinson said.
“We've got to bring that message to the Team Series as well, that through rigorous fitness and good, healthy, clean eating, you can get rid of chronic disease,” added Pulliam, who is a nurse by profession. “That's an extra little layer for me that whenever I go out there; I'm not just working out for myself, I'm working out for everyone around me.”
What Are You Waiting For?
Got you all motivated?
There’s still time to register for the 2017 CrossFit Team Series. Competition starts on Wednesday, and you have until Monday, Sept. 25, to register, complete the first week of workouts and submit your scores.
“You're gonna surprise yourself,” Pulliam said. “You'll learn more about yourself. Maybe you're not going to be top 10 or place high or whatever, but that's not necessarily the point of all competition. Competition is to just pull out a better you that you had no idea existed.”